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Oceanic Portals?

"Hell's Gate" and "Hell Hath No Fury", by David, Linda Evans, and Joelle Presby, take the clash of science and magic to a whole new dimension...join us in a friendly discussion of this engrossing series!

If land portals lead to other land portals, then ocean portals may lead to other ocean portals. If so, then with each world being roughly equal in content of water, since they are geographically the same, then there would be no transfer of water from one world to another. The ocean water level and pressure would be the same on both worlds.

So maybe there are water portals, but they are submerged. No ship can get to them, only sea animals can get to some of them. And then they most likely would lead to completely different worlds than the land based portals would. Thus, for the sea animals to get to worlds linked by land based portals they would need to use a train for transportation across to those worlds.

I fear that this is one of those convenient plot holes that can't quite be filled properly (although I have faith in RFC to be able to explain things such as this). That said, the connecting point between two universes might well be the same relative place in both universes and as such while there might be slight variations on the relative time of year, the relative rotation of the Earth on its axis etc., they are in the corresponding locations in space relative to the sun. That said, here's an even scarier thought: a portal that opens up into space. I don't think we're likely to find an earth that's had it's atmosphere sucked out into the void however. The reason Earth has an atmosphere is the planet's gravitational pull. So while the location around the portal might have subzero temperatures, the gravity on one side would keep the atmosphere in place.

But the easiest solution for an ocean portal would be that the story would not be interesting if a portal opened and one world's ocean emptied into another world until the water pressures on both sides equalized (Pascal's Law I believe its called).

1 - The center of a portal might be a mile or two higher on one side than on the other. The wind always blows from the lower side to the higher side.

2 - No evidence that any portal has ever yet closed, or disappeared. Of course none has been open for more than a few hundred years, so closures might still happen ... someday, or some century.

3 - Every portal we have been shown, has been vertical.

4 - No evidence that bodies of water inhibit portal formation. DW has hinted, in interviews and in statements at conventions, that the portals are not natural events, but are formed deliberately by "somebody."

HTM

Max wrote:Now, some portals are big, miles across, and high. They are also deep. Where are the volcanoes? You might get the whole planet sucked through one of these thing, slowly..

It's been a while...

I think it would be fairly safe to add some reasonable speculations to this line of discussion in the form of a few fairly obvious rules about portals:

1) The center of each side of a portal has to have matching or close to matching gravitational potentials; The windy portals are basically weather like events, and are not driven by mass shifting. Over a long enough interval, the winds will blow in both directions. Also, no sucking the whole planet out of one universe into another.

2) Since portal creations are a fairly recent phenomenon, (several paragraphs present evidence for that), it is also possible that portals also disappear eventually. There might be some archaeological evidence for "extinct" portals, but somebody would have to be looking for it to see it.

3) Portals require a solid matrix on both sides of their centers to form. More likely, they are a surface phenomenon, meaning that the visible part of a portal will be very close to a semi-circle and the edges of a portal, where it meets the surface, will be vertical, not oblique. This makes the volcanic possibilities moot.

4) Further, bodies of water, particularly salt water, inhibit portal formation, which would put portals in continental interiors, and away from the coasts. No oceanic portals and no spectacular naval battles.

On the subject of ocean portals, I'm fairly sure that people are basing this off some comments by the Cetaceans on Sharonia. The problem here is that any such portal would be quickly noticed by a Portal Hound, unless it operates on such completely different principals.

I also find it interesting that there has only been one portal mentioned in Australia to date

An underwater portal might go unnoticed by a portal hound, or by arcana's portal detectors. It depends on exactly how a portal is detected. If it is by EM radiation (some kind of unique radio signature) water could very well block it. Only ELF (extremely low frequency), visible light, and some UV penetrate water very well.

Not saying underwater portals exist, but if portals were forming randomly one would think that they should appear in the oceans.

1 - The center of a portal might be a mile or two higher on one side than on the other. The wind always blows from the lower side to the higher side.

2 - No evidence that any portal has ever yet closed, or disappeared. Of course none has been open for more than a few hundred years, so closures might still happen ... someday, or some century.

3 - Every portal we have been shown, has been vertical.

4 - No evidence that bodies of water inhibit portal formation. DW has hinted, in interviews and in statements at conventions, that the portals are not natural events, but are formed deliberately by "somebody."

HTM

Well, the first point is that there are universes that neither side has explored yet. There could be universes that are unconnected, or connected to each other but not to either side in this conflict.

The question about the volcanoes was prompted by the fact that none have been mentioned and that they would be rather spectacular if they did exist. Since they aren't, why not?

The portal winds are a problem, particularly if the portal has been open a long time. You would get mega-mass shifts unless there is something balancing the forces. If it went on long enough, the oceans would evaporate and pour through the portal as water-vapor. Talk about an ecological disaster...

Or, more likely, closures have happened and gone unnoticed... I suspect you would have to be looking for them to find evidence that they had happened.

I did see where RFC mentioned Oceanic portals with a sense that they might become significant.

I also saw a little about there being a "cause" of portals, but it was sort of vague and I did not think there was sufficient information presented to require that some person or persons were controlling the process. The amount of time involved argues against it being a single person but deux ex machina [sp?] is an old literary device.

snip:I also saw a little about there being a "cause" of portals, but it was sort of vague and I did not think there was sufficient information presented to require that some person or persons were controlling the process. The amount of time involved argues against it being a single person but deux ex machina [sp?] is an old literary device.snip

During one of the Q&A panels at MantiCon, DW mentioned that the portal formation was the result of something akin to an industrial accident. And that the in-universe people would eventually find that out for themselves.

One thought about oceanic portals that might be an argument against them is the notion that the portals are not random acts of nature, but the work of a third party. That idea has been with us pretty much all along.

If they are placed with the view of impacting humanity in various universes, then and oceanic portal would seem counter-intuitive since the chances of being discovered would be more problematic, if not completely non-existant.

Don

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When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.

OTOH, if they are placed with the view of impacting the local sentients, ocean portals make all kinds of sense - in those universes with sentient cetaceans. Or sentient giant squid, or whatever the local flavour happens to be...

n7axw wrote:One thought about oceanic portals that might be an argument against them is the notion that the portals are not random acts of nature, but the work of a third party. That idea has been with us pretty much all along.

If they are placed with the view of impacting humanity in various universes, then and oceanic portal would seem counter-intuitive since the chances of being discovered would be more problematic, if not completely non-existant.